The Big Red Sign of Death… Unless

Today I went to a site to sign up as an affiliate for a new product they’re offering, and saw the huge red sign of death when I attempted to go to the site.

Now it’s not really the sign of death, well, it could be.

It reminded me of last year when I went to one of MY sites and saw the very same image. I was FREAKING out!! At the time I was using the basic wp-backup plugin for backups. While I got these lovely notices every week that my site was backed up, I had NO IDEA what to do with the backups or even how to access them. When I tried to open one it just looked like a bunch of gobbeldy gook.

I frantically called my hosting company, praying they would be able to help me. Luckily, at that time I was JUST BARELY below the threshold on my account where they continue to make backups for you, and just happened to call right before the next backup was scheduled to happen… so… they were able to go to the last backup and reinstall a clean version of my site.

But did you notice how many “just happened” were in that sentence. This is my business and I’d definitely left myself wide open to lose everything by not having a better quality backup system in place.

Here’s the other reason this it’s imperative to have a total backup system… wordpress upgrades.

Way back in the beginning, I didn’t think anything of hitting the “upgrade wordpress” button. I didn’t even KNOW things could go wrong. I worked under the assumption people knew what they were doing (because I didn’t necessarily) and if they provided me with a button I’d be A-OK to hit it.

Well… we all know that’s not the truth. As more and more upgrade horror stories rolled in I started to become almost paranoid of that stupid upgrade your wordpress button. In fact, I just wouldn’t hit it. I just left my sites on old versions of wordpress.

Until one day I went to access my sites and got a nice little message from my hosting company that said. UH uh. no way. Get your ass in here and upgrade your wordpress installs.

So I did. I took my sites in my hands and upgraded with no problems. However, as my sites grew, and my business grew, I added elements and things got a little more complicated than just a basic wordpress upgrade. I still didn’t have a good system in place for backing up my sites.

I did (and do) have a great tech person who I would pay each and every time to just do the backing up and upgrading for me so I didn’t have to stress my little head about it. This was a great solution for me. I hate all that tech stuff, and the anxiety of disappearing my site.. but it gets a bit expensive when they start coming out with a new wordpress version every other week and well, you know I’ve got a lot of sites.

So I finally added up the numbers and realized I was being an idiot. As much as I love not dealing with it, I could easily have purchased the same exact system my amazing tech person was using many times over and just done it myself in about a second.

I decided to go ahead and just get Backup Buddy. I started with the 2 site license ~ to cover my two main sites, and after seeing how easy it is, and how simple it will be if anything ever goes wrong I’m going to upgrade to the unlimited license to cover all my sites. With the level of simplicity Backup Buddy gives you, and the level of security ~ both on your site and in your mind ~ it’s totally worth it.

The thing is… I know you all probably use the free plugin, and think that’s good enough. Let me ask you this… if your site ever started showing a big red sign of death like the one above ~ you would only have your database backed up. That’s not your whole site. I didn’t understand this, and it’s a HUGE difference.

I know you think it will never happen to you… you’re just a small fry in the big bad internet, why would someone target your little site to completely mess with?

It’s not like that… it’s computers sent out to do this. Computers running on a program, to find a hole where they can get in. They don’t care if your site is big and has a lot of traffic, or if you haven’t even earned your first 5 bucks online yet. The program doesn’t care… it’s just out there searching, searching searching. So YES, it can even happen to you.

Don’t wait until the red sign of death shows up on your site before you have a quality back up in place. I could literally have lost 6 years of my hard work if not by the grace of someone more powerful than I. It didn’t have to be that way. I could have listened (way back then) to my magnificent tech person who kept telling me… you need a better backup system… you need a better backup system. I could have been completely protected, and been able to fix my site with literally the click of a couple buttons.

That’s the key to a great backup system, not only do they back up everything, but they make it super easy to restore your site back to its original state should something go wrong.

Don’t wait any longer ~ don’t leave your site open to being lost. Get backup buddy ~ it’s a simple plugin, that does amazing work. You simply install it, just like any other plugin, and then tick a couple boxes to get it working for you. It’s definitely worth it.